


synesthesia

by alimento_mori



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Fluff, M/M, smut if you squint hard enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alimento_mori/pseuds/alimento_mori
Summary: Yixing falls in love with the handsome mute who enjoys getting lost in literature just as much as he does.//Yixing is but a dull noun and Jongdae is his epithet, coloring in his white empty spaces perfectly with the adjectives of infatuation.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	synesthesia

**Author's Note:**

> wow so this was originally posted in 2012 here (https://alimento-mori.livejournal.com/1991.html) but i never wrote anything fic-related after that and then locked it away so i randomly thought to revist it and rework it! i rewrote multiple parts since they were honestly pretty bad LOL...and thought it would be a good way to get my writing foot back in the door -- enjoy!! 
> 
> my apologies in advance for any inaccuracies that may be represented in this work; i am always open to suggestion and correction ♡

Yixing is completely, undeniably, devotedly (and many, many other words varying in complexity and eloquence) in love with the way Jongdae talks.  
He sees it for the first time in the corner of a tiny bookstore; the aroma of erudition and aged pages of tearing books had always been a strange liking of Yixing’s -- and so he’s drawn into the seemingly unpopular library of sorts by the promise of losing consciousness in the crisp music of literature.

  
However, upon spotting Jongdae speak in a cramped corner, Yixing forgot all about literature on coffee-stained pages. For the first time, Yixing was at a loss for words as his gaze fell upon the tussled chestnut hair cascading just over eyes that shone a liquid gold in the sunlight – “The sun should be so thankful” the writer thinks to himself as his stare travels across a beautifully mountainous bone structure, pausing at the slightly upturned corners of playful yet taunting pout, and landing on hands that were pulling Yixing in like the high tide at noon. Jongdae became the piece of literary art Yixing had been craving -- like a book you simply cannot put down despite tired eyes and heavy eyelids, like a poem that cautions old memories and makes you swim in its verses, like a novella whose prose sneaks its way into your subconscious to dig at your soul and leave you speechless.

  
When Jongdae speaks, his words dance through the air swift and soft and then rough and rich. Yixing finds himself reading rapidly line-by-line, famished and full of lust for more of Jongdae’s smooth syntax. His voice is silent, yet it fills Yixing’s ears to the brim but it’s not nearly enough.

  
Yixing wants Jongdae to speak to him with a voice that crawls articulately along the curves of his lips like a simile and Yixing would like to reply with mewed stanzas along Jongdae’s jawline. Yixing wants the other to treat him like an anaphora, revisiting the curves of his body with familiarity. He longs to tap along the delicate ribs of Jongdae, stressed and unstressed syllables meshing together to create a unique tempo only for his ears. Yixing is but a dull noun and Jongdae is his epithet, coloring in his white empty spaces perfectly with the adjectives of infatuation. Jongdae becomes his paradox -- the inversion to his normally vacuous life. The desire to create a diction all their own burns through every vein in Yixing’s body and he finds his eyes are dimming into ink-covered pages; he forgets how to breathe and balance because Jongdae’s speech was much too dulcet and Yixing read too hastily in his greed. Jongdae is literature personified and Yixing struggles to not get tangled in interpretation or lost in translation.

  
Yixing knows that if he goes home without speaking to his newly found muse he will never be able to pick up a book without feeling a profound emptiness. So, he walks over to the silently speaking Jongdae, and pulls him out of his book.

  
Jongdae looks up with sorry eyes and begins to lets his hands voice an explanation, assuming Yixing has approached him in hopes of vocal conversation.  
But Yixing knows Jongdae’s silence and finds the beauty of passionate literature within it. And so he slides his arms across one another, ending in fists and a slight head bow, vocalizing a loud ‘hello’.

  
Jongdae’s eyes enlarge, glazed over with surprise, but slowly, he repeats the gesture and it is the most aesthetically pleasing ’hello’ Yixing has ever heard.

\-----  
There is no translatable word known to Yixing or Jongdae, be it Korean or Chinese, that can describe the awkward limbo their relationship floats within. Upon meeting in the dust-swarmed bookstore, they continued to meet there every week and enjoy a cup of coffee over books. Neither saying anything much, only communicating when coming across a particular passage they enjoy.

Slowly, gradually, (for Yixing, painfully) Jongdae finally agrees to meet somewhere outside of the tiny confines of their secret library. Over a sickingly sweet atmosphere brought on by a candle light dinner at an expensive restaurant (to which Jongdae vehemently refuted but Yixing ardently insisted), glorious piano keys floating through the air, and the faint scent of rose petals and amber, Jongdae learns more about Yixing and vice versa.

Yixing is a Chinese foreign-exchange student from the local university studying literature in hopes of pursuing creative writing. Since his youth, he found himself deeply infatuated with words and language and the way they could be strung together to relay the exact feelings that would tug at his heart in either excruciating or exhilarating ways. Growing up with a deaf younger sister not only taught him the art of sign language, but the importance of relaying emotion without spoken words. When he learned he would be moving to Korea for school, he decided to pick up Korean Sign Language as well -- perhaps in hopes that he could get a side job as an interpreter. However Yixing is a writer, first and foremost.

Jongdae works as a freelance audio transcriber, listening to endless hours of people doing something he cannot and recording it all into typed documents. Jongdae explains the feeling of having the job of listening to others speak as “self-detrimental but easy enough”. Yixing learns that after a traffic accident led to severe damage to his larynx, Jongdae lost his ability to speak as a child. Therapies and counseling proved useless as Jongdae spoke less and less with each passing day. Written words became the only solace Jongdae could find; words became his therapy. Jongdae lives by himself and keeps to himself for the most part; he has no desire to dissolve seamlessly into the social scenes around him. He’d much rather melt onto pages of the books he reads. Jongdae is a reader, first and foremost.

Yixing looks at Jongdae with empathizing eyes and the latter responds by throwing a napkin in his face before furiously swishing his fingers in the air, creating a resounding yet playful, “I don’t need your pity puppy eyes. But you can pay for dinner, if you like.” Yixing does so without a second’s hesitation.

The two manage to only find time for one another once a week. Every Sunday Jongdae comes with a new captivating word or phrase to teach Yixing and hopefully inspire his writing. Yixing tells Jongdae to make sure they’re obscure words or phrases, ones that cannot be easily defined. On their first regular Sunday, they meet at the community park and sit on an old moldy bench to gaze over the rolling green hills, children playing resembling ants scurrying. Jongdae turns to his Chinese company and illustrates letters with carefully pointed fingers.

“This is a Japanese word. Koi no yokan. Koi no yokan is a phrase to describe the intuitive feeling that you get when you meet someone for the first time and there is the possibility of falling in love.”

The curves of Yixing lips tug at the corners as he jots the new phrase down. He side glances at Jongdae, whose face is unmoving.

“Is there a reason you chose this phrase?”

Jongdae runs his finger across the aged wood of the bench between his leg and Yixing’s, wincing when he finds a splinter lodged into his skin, perfectly in line with the squiggles of his fingerprint. After a moment’s struggle against the stubborn tiny log, he stares forward, eyes lost in the blades of grass and speckles of bright daisies.

“There is and I don’t exactly like it.”

Yixing shifts uncomfortably and the wood beneath him creaks and groans, replicating his insides if they could speak. More so than ever before, in this moment, complete and utter silence falls between the two.

\----

The next Sunday, Jongdae stumbles into a quaint, dimmed coffee shop with an English word. After slipping the cashier his written order, he takes a seat across the waiting Yixing.

“I could have ordered for you. My treat too.”

Jongdae furrows his eyebrows at the other, pride seeping from his pores.

“I can order by myself just fine.”

“I didn’t mean it like that Jongdae. I just –“

Yixing doesn’t know how to articulate his protective feelings for Jongdae through his mediocre sign language skills, so he drops his hands in defeat.

The Korean boy smiles slightly, mostly from guilt, and slips Yixing a piece of paper with today’s word on it.

Pistanthrophobia: the fear of trusting another person. Usually developed through past experiences of relationships going sour.

Yixing scans the definition over and over and recalls every instance of Jongdae’s hesitation towards him, hoping to excuse it away with today’s vocabulary.  
Yixing then examines Jongdae’s face and immediately understands that the choice of today’s word goes far beyond their relationship. He can see the burden that has hardened the curves of his lips and the hurt that has chiseled the tips of his fingers. Yixing wants to tell Jongdae that he promises to be different, that he does not need to be afraid, that Yixing will speak to him softly in more ways than one. But Jongdae leaves his seat to retrieve his drink before Yixing can even lift his hands from his lap.

\----

A few Sundays later on a Wednesday (right in between Sundays as Yixing didn’t want to seem too eager), Yixing texts Jongdae that he found a word he wants to share with the other. Jongdae doesn’t text back until Saturday night with an “Ok. See you there.”

This time they decide to go to the movies yet choosing one proves more difficult than expected. Jongdae detests sappy romantics, and Yixing is too much of a baby to sit through a thriller so they compromise on a comedy and head into the theater.

Yixing begins to slowly, yet carefully spell out the word of the day.

“L’esprit de l’escalier. It’s French. It’s meant to describe the feeling one gets after leaving a conversation with things unsaid.”

Jongdae nods, eyes semi-focused on the looping reminders of “Please silence your cellphones” playing on the large screen. When he finally meets eyes with Yixing, he brings his hands up to his face asking, “Why this word?”

The movie begins before Yixing can figure out how to sign his answer and he slumps back into his seat, pouting.

Halfway through the movie, Yixing regrets his refusal to watch the thriller movie. Every time something humorous in the movie occurs, Yixing bursts out in laughter, giggles ripping at his sides. He does so multiple times until he notices that Jongdae can only smile at every joke with silent chuckles. Yixing holds in any laughter for the remainder of the movie and just smiles, sometimes turning to Jongdae to find a unidentifiable gratitude laying just past his russet eyes.

After the movie, the pair walk back out into the cold and Jongdae puffs his cheeks in out, playing with the way his breath forms wisps of fog. He turns to Yixing and grins before pulling petite hands out of his pockets.

“You never answered why you chose that word for the day?”

Yixing steps directly in front of Jongdae and the latter stops pretending to be a smoke-breathing dragon.

“There are things I wished I said before. You chose that phobia word once because you do not easily trust people right?”

Jongdae responds with a shrug in his too-big sweater. Yixing takes one Jongdae’s hands in his own and gently spells out letters into his palm. It takes time but Jongdae has patience.

“Situational irony.”

Yixing drops the hand of the man he’s learned to adore and steps back, eyes crinkled from a smirk.

“You think that you cannot trust me, but the irony here is that you can, even if you do not expect it. I guess in my case, dramatic irony. I know you can trust me, but you do not.”

“Whatever, lit major.”

Jongdae rolls his eyes, cheeks stained pink, and walks off towards his home with Yixing trailing happily behind him.

\----

More Sundays pass and this time the couple finds themselves at an ice cream parlor. Yixing, who seemed oddly excited for ice-cream as grown man, tapped Jongdae on his shoulder, eyes wild with amusement.

“Jongdae, watch this okay? Stand by the door. Knowing you, you’re going to bolt out of here.”

Jongdae raises his left eyebrow and takes his place by the entrance and watches as Yixing orders a vanilla ice cream cone. Once it’s done, the worker extends his arm to hand the creamy delight to the tall Chinese man but before grabbing it, Yixing asks him “Do you believe in unicorns?”

Jongdae’s eyes widen in complete disbelief at Yixing’s stupidity and he manages to hightail it out the door right as Yixing snatches the cone and slams it onto his forehead before proceeding to run out looking like one stupid, whimsical unicorn. Jongdae wipes away his amused tears as he helps Yixing clean the sticky cream from his raven hair. As he does, he stops to let his hands tell Yixing that the word of the day has never been more fitting.

“Indonesian. Lucu. Used to describe something that is both cute and funny at the same time. In other words, a good-looking college-aged man who likes to go into ice cream parlors and embarrass those around him by uniconing.”

Yixing puffs his cheeks out in a pout but appreciates that Jongdae finds him ‘lucu’ all the same. He watches Jongdae lick away stickiness from his fingers and Yixing finds it hard to breathe properly.

\---

Yixing loses track of their Sundays and this time he's with Jongdae back at the park where they had the first Sunday.

They lay in the grass, ignoring the way the blades itch at their skin and admiring the vast blue ocean above them.

Fingers and skin only inches away, twitching with indecision and hesitation. Jongdae shifts closer to Yixing, hands up.

“Word of the day.”

“I have one too.”

“You go first.”

Yixing starts to spell it out letter by letter, but halts to look at Jongdae. He reaches over, and digs his fingers into the brown waves of Jongdae’s hair, getting lost in the rich softness.

Jongdae turns scarlet but says nothing, does nothing.

Yixing pulls his hands away, half relieved that he’d finally done something remotely romantic towards Jongdae, but half scared of his possible reactions.

“Cafuné is Brazilian Portuguese for the act of running your fingers through your loved one’s hair.”

Jongdae scoots closer to Yixing, hands drawing letters in the air.

“The Norwegian word forelsket is used to relay the euphoria you feel when you recognize that you are falling in love with someone for the first time.”

Yixing feels something snap within him, ropes of uncertainty holding him down are now tearing apart and he rolls atop Jongdae, lips crashing into the other’s, speaking louder than Yixing or Jongdae ever could.

Yixing can feel every anecdote he’s ever read about love creeping on the surface of Jongdae’s lips and Jongdae can feel every sonnet he’s gushed over in the strands of Yixing’s hair against his hands. Yixing can’t breathe, he doesn’t even want to. The sweet scent of their kisses fill his lungs and time is completely lost, the blue sky above them turning dark and glittered with white specks.

Sunday turns to Monday, and the two find themselves sharing many firsts, starting at the park and ending in Yixing’s apartment. First kisses, first intertwining of fingers, first Monday together. Monday blurs into Tuesday and Yixing hasn’t gone to school, but doesn’t mind at all. He can make up for it later. His mind is too busy filling up on notes about the curves and dips of Jongdae’s body in his hands.

The imagery of Jongdae’s head tossed back, cheeks flushed, ribs squirming against milky skin and white bed sheets is vivid and beautiful enough for Yixing to write a fable on how ethereal he is in this weakened state. Yixing bites his tongue and nibbles at his lover’s neck to stifle noises he’s desperate to hear from Jongdae but knows he can’t, so he holds back his own. The only noises filling the room are the occasional muffled grunts of Yixing and the rubbing of hot hands on sweaty skin mixed in with Jongdae’s heavy breathing. Yixing has to bury his face completely into the fold of Jongdae’s neck as his passion peaks, vision going white. Jongdae’s hands tugging and scratching at Yixing’s muscular back as he follows.

In the aftermath of a Wednesday morning, Jongdae writes into the pillowcase.

“German. Geborgenheit. To feel like you are in a safe haven, a sanctuary. Completely out of harm’s way.”

Yixing wipes at the matted hair on his lovers forehead and plants kisses there before replying.

“I have a word as well. It is Chinese. It is called Yuanfen, meaning a relationship created by fate or destiny. Meant to be, soul mates.”

Jongdae grins, moving shoulder to shoulder with Yixing and laying on his back to reply with his hands easier.

“I like that one. It’s eerily cliché, us I mean. What are the chances that you would stumble upon me in a practically abandoned bookstore, and the first thing you see is my biggest flaw yet you found it to be beautiful? It has to be meant to be, it has to be.”

Yixing tangles his fingers in Jongdae’s, bringing them to his lips to kiss them tenderly before glancing up to meet eyes and letting go to swipe a reply.

“I love you, I really do. Sunday is my favorite day and we’ve had so many Sundays they all blur into one and I feel like it’s become my life. Just Sunday. I live on Sundays and the rest of the days I just wait.”

Jongdae’s lips curl into a teasing smile, “That’s not a very eloquent confession. I expected more from a writer.”

“Then would you like to hear a poem instead?”

“You have poems about me?”

“Why would I not have poems about my muse?”

The mute lays his head against his lover’s shoulder, “Let me hear it then. Hear it. Don’t sign it. I want to hear your voice. I like it. I don’t get to hear it enough. You are too careful with me. I’m not so delicate that you cannot speak around me. I will not get hurt.”

Yixing nods and mentally sifts through all the pieces of literature he’s written about the Korean boy he is smitten with. With one arm around Jongdae, he lets the other dig through the cupboards of his nightstand until he pulls out the notebook he brings with him all the time, flips to a doggy-eared page, and reads aloud.

"  
I have,  
I’ll admit,  
once or twice  
(I’ve lost count)  
slipped into my nest at the peak of twilight  
and begged the moon to sing me to slumber  
and bid the stars to caress the cracks of my broken skin.  
I have,  
I’ll admit,  
once or twice,  
(perhaps I’ve miscounted)  
in my mind,  
replaced the creases of my covers  
with the tickles of your hair on my skin.  
I have,  
I’ll admit,  
once or twice,  
(or possibly for the umpteenth time )  
greeted the scarlet and apricot hues of a sun dancing across the sky  
after spending the night counting each and every thread in my bed  
and companying them with reasons as to why I have,  
once or twice,  
found love in you.  
"

Yixing doesn’t expect to finish reading and find Jongdae crying, but he grips tighter when he does, not totally understand why Jongdae keeps spelling out “Sorry”.

\-----

Thursday comes and Jongdae leaves with a smile that doesn’t look like Jongdae, at least not to Yixing.

Sunday comes and passes and Jongdae doesn’t come out of his apartment because he claims to be ill. He won’t open the door for Yixing either.

More Sundays pass and every week comes with unanswered text messages, ignored knocks of the door, and no sign of Yixing’s muse.

Sundays keep flying by and Yixing stops texting, stops calling, stops visiting. He, however, does not stop spending his Sundays in the quaint little bookstore where he first fell in love with Jongdae.

Too many Sundays to count pass by and Yixing goes from twenty-one to twenty-two in the blink of an eye.

The ambiguity that Jongdae left clouds his mind every second and he has been unable to write a decent piece of art since his disappearance. Yet he still reads, hoping something he comes across will spark inspiration within him like Jongdae did and he can finally get back to letting his feelings spill across pages.

One particular Sunday crawls by silently when an unfamiliar bell chimes through the store as someone enters; normally Yixing is the only one to occupy the shop in the early hours on Sundays. Yixing looks up to see the familiar chestnut hair, beautiful facial structure, delicate hands, and warm eyes of his muse standing in front of him.

Something is different however, and Yixing notices immediately. A tiny, two-inch long and half-inch thick strip of raised tissue lying at the base of Jongdae’s neck. Scarred tissue a few shades lighter than his normal skin tone.

Yixing is muted, not quite sure what to say as Jongdae takes a seat across from him and slips him a piece of paper.

“Retrouvailles (French): the elated feeling of reuniting after much time has passed.”

Yixing’s eyes zone in on the scar on his past lover’s neck, guessing a plot he can only dream is true. As he does so, a sound he’s never heard cuts through the air and fill his ears, bringing tears to his eyes.

“Hello.” Jongdae mews and it is the second most aesthetically pleasing ‘hello’ Yixing has ever heard.


End file.
